Author's note: I can happily say that this is the FIRST Transformers/ Horizon Zero Dawn crossover on this site, which pleases me way more than it should. Those of you who read my transformers stuff should recognise the first part of this as being from Locked On, but no, this isn't Fang playing the part. Instead, say hello to a different OC. This probably won't connect up to anything Transformers-wise, but it's in the same universe as 'United We Stand', which I will release on [REDACTED]. Yes, I'm rebooting that. I'm not happy with the original, and I want to create my own TF universe, with more potential to world-build. This story will either develop as I play through HZD or make stuff up though, so expect updates to be infrequent, as I also have commitments to finish a load of other stories first. If I've got Aloy a little too away from her character, please let me know, and give me tips to fix my work! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own HZD or Transformers

Chapter 1: Hunter, Huntress, and Newcomer

The huntress ran through the forest of tall pines, her flame-like orange hair whipping in the wind. A damaged bow and empty quiver jostled on her back, signs of an unsuccessful hunt. Behind her, the red eyed machine crashed through the foliage, it's sensors entirely focused on its target. It would hunt this invader, the small one who had pierced it's hide with the primitive weapon, and destroy it.

Huntress and Hunter ran on, one seeking revenge, the other salvation. The trees began to thin out and large, mossy rocks began to emerge among tall grass, weathered down by years of cycling seasons. As the terrain changed, the Hunter gained ground, the rocks hindering the path of its prey.

Suddenly, the Huntress skidded to a stop. She had reached the edge of a sheer cliff and could run no further. The Hunter whirred in satisfaction and slowed, cornering the Huntress against the drop. It would take great satisfaction in this. It advanced menacingly, ready to terminate the Huntress.

Then another massive machine charged into the hunt. Unlike the Hunter, it displayed blood red, shining silver, and royal gold paints on a hide dented and scuffed from many battles. Its jaws opened wide and it roared before clamping down around the Hunter's long neck, tearing through its armour as if it was butter. The Hunter screeched and tried to break free as Newcomer lifted its head, exposing Hunter's vulnerable chest. The Hunter tried to resist and activate its weaponry before Newcomer thrust one of her short, two-fingered servos into its chest, clutched its heart and wrenched it out.

Newcomer let the lifeless chassis of the machine slip from his jaws and collapse. Removing the power core was a reliable way to terminate the white machines, a few of which, such as this one, were bigger than her. Better still, this core was still intact. She carefully placed it on the ground before looking over the rest of her kill. It was in good condition, except for the hole her servo had gone through and the… arrows?

She looked up and to the edge of the cliff. The Huntress still stood there, disbelief written all over her face. Organic lifeforms were often strange, but this one was fierce- she could tell that much. Newcomer turned back to the chassis of the Hunter and snorted in satisfaction. She could salvage this. She picked up the power core in her arms and grabbed the tail of the chassis in his mouth and started dragging it back to his camp.

"What are you?" Huntress wondered, putting her hand to a device nestled above her ear.

Newcomer paused and let go of the chassis of Hunter before looking at the organic and growling out "Lost."

Then she returned to her task of transporting the offline hulk of the white machine as Huntress stared at her in shock.

The Cybertronian had been stranded on this planet for just over the length of time that a group of organics that populated it called a month. Her escape pod had crashed up in the mountains, but she'd managed to salvage what she could and subspace it, then find a more suitable place to call a temporary base.

In that time, she had not been idle. A camp had slowly grown in a grassy clearing beside a stream. A metal and stone wall, five times as tall as a human encircled the camp, a motorised gate barring each side. Crude wind turbines, rusty solar panels and scavenged power cores were linked to a bank of large batteries on one side of the compound. This provided electricity to lights, a basic computer system that ran using a former machine's wiped processor, and three defensive turrets that watched from equidistant points on the wall, cobbled together from the remains of the machine that she had labelled Hunter.

Speaking of Hunter, its defaced chassis lay next to the power cells, large rents in the armour plating from where Newcomer had removed various systems. The weapons labelled 'disc launcher', 'cannons', and 'lasers' had been re-purposed for the aforementioned turrets, while a scanner that the machine possessed had been mounted on top of a makeshift metal tower in the centre of the camp and was connected to the computer. Thank Primus that she'd worked as an engineer before the war broke out, or she wouldn't have been able to set up any of this.

It was this early warning system that woke her from her recharge. The cybertronian rose to full height and strode out of camp in Dino-mode, the gate opening automatically for her. She looked around, her tail waving slightly in the cool breeze as her two-clawed servos twitched. The computer pinged an alert to her HUD, showing that the intruder was hiding behind a clump of boulders a few hundred metres away. She stalked over, her pedes swishing through the tall grass, their impacts making the ground shake. Rounding the rocks with a growl, she was confronted by a flame haired teenage girl wielding a bow, an arrow already nocked. Huntress.

The growl cut off abruptly. Huntress lowered the bow. She looked into the cybertronian's orange optics and said one word. "Why?"

The Dinobot didn't say anything in response, but turned around and walked back to camp, her tail swishing angrily. She didn't like surprises, not after the purple devil had given her the worst one of her life. Huntress followed her, jogging to keep up. As they approached, the turrets trained their weaponry at her, but stood down after a code was pinged from the Dinobot to the computer. The nearest gate opened for the cybertronian and human, administering them into the temporary base.

Huntress looked around at the computer, wind turbines and solar panels with wonder. "This is technology of the Old Ones!"

Newcomer grunted and forced thick, monosyllabic words out of a corrupted vocaliser. "It is prim-i-tive com-pared to that of Cy-ber-tron."

Huntress turned back to Newcomer, her face incredulous. "The devices that the Old Ones created-"

Newcomer snorted, rolled her optics and transformed. Plating shifted, spikes retracted, and the tail folded away as the reptilian body hissed into a humanoid one within seconds. Newcomer's root mode, well her 'post-Shockwave' root mode was bulky, incredibly strong, and closely resembled her brother's, although she was shorter and slimmer than him, and had no visor or mouthgaurd. She looked over at Huntress. Apparently, slack-jawed amazement was experienced across multiple species. She lowered herself so his helm was as low as possible without her lying down.

"Prim-i-tive." she stated with a smug smile, before rising back up to her towering height and walking over to the computer.

There was five minutes of silence except from the tapping of keys and the songs of birds before Huntress spoke again. "You didn't answer my question."

The Dinobot continued typing as she replied. "I did not."

"So why did you save me?"

"While I have been on-line, I have saved lives and took them. I pre-fer the for-mer."

"You've killed people?" It was a question rather than an accusation.

"My peo-ple and your peo-ple differ. I have killed oth-ers of my race, not or-gan-ics. At least, not yet."

"Why do you say 'not yet'?"

The Dinobot finally looked over at Huntress, her optics bright. "Ev-ery-one has po-ten-tial to do harm, for sur-vi-val, plea-sure, or re-venge, a-mong oth-er rea-sons. If you want to sur-vive, there is a point where you harm them back, and harm them good. You seem to know this al-read-y."

There was another long silence before Newcomer turned off the computer screen, strode over to Huntress and sat, shaking the ground.

"Who are you?" Huntress asked. "What are you? You told me first time we met that you were lost. Why is that?"

"My des-ig-na-tion is Flintlock." she said, smiling as she managed to say her name as a single word. "You will not un-der-stand the rest... What is your name, or-gan-ic?"

"Aloy." Huntress said holding out a hand that Flintlock shook with a single finger. "My name is Aloy. As for me not understanding the rest, try me."

Flintlock laughed for the first time in a long while. "Bold talk for one who does not even know of trans-form-ation!"

Aloy rolled her eyes. "I've taken down machines twice your size. I think that allows me to decide what's bold talk and what isn't."

"And I have des-troy-ed en-tire ba-ttal-i-ons of In-sect-i-cons alone. Give me my bro-ther and his team too, and we're un-stopp-a-ble."

The huntress's shoulders sagged in defeat. "Sounds like you're the strongest there is."

Flintlock smiled, flashing smooth rows of denta. "You'd be slagg-ed in the pro-cess-or to say oth-er-wise. Us Dino-bots are ru-lers of ba-ttle."

"Even if I don't understand, then tell me about yourself." Aloy said.

The Dinobot shook her head. "I have a deal. I you ask a ques-tion, then I do. Then we repeat. Sound good?"

Aloy nodded and asked. "What exactly are you?" Then, realising that the question sounded a little offensive, went on to say "Sorry, that was rude. I mean, you're a machine, but you're not like any of the ones I know of, so where do you come from?"

Flintlock scratched the side of her helm, dislodging a flake of rust. "I'm not off-en-ded. I am a mem-ber of a self-aware race of ro-bo-tic org-an-isms from an-oth-er world called Cy-ber-tron."

"Another world?! How did you get here?!"

"It's my turn to ask now."

"You can't just drop a revelation like that and not expect me to ask about it!"

"Can."

Aloy snorted. She wasn't about to go through the whole can-can't routine with a machine.

Fortunately for her, the question was a simple one. "How did you find me?"

"I'm a good tracker." Aloy said. "And your footprints aren't exactly hard to miss. I just started where we last met and went on from there."

The Dinobot nodded and Aloy almost burst with "What do you mean by another world, and how did you learn my language?"

"Ex-act-ly what I said." Flintlock said, pointing skyward. "Cy-ber-tron is up there some-where. When you see the stars at night, one of them will be the one that shines on my home in the same way that your star does on this pla-net. As for your lan-gua-ge, I down-load-ed it from the pro-cess-ors of de-fea-ted ma-chines, and sec-tions of this rock's frag-men-ted data-net." Abruptly, the subject was changed to "Why are you out by your-self? You spe-cies of or-gan-ics work in packs, but you don't. What's your story?"

Aloy sighed, clearly suppressing bad memories. "From birth, I was an outcast. I have no mother or father, so I was raised by Rost. He took care of me, but he was a teacher first, and a father second. When I was six, he told me about the Proving- a rite of passage that my tribe hold, and how the winner of it has a request granted for them by the High Matriarchs."

Flintlock raised an optic ridge, so Aloy elaborated by saying "They lead my tribe, the Nora. Anyway, during the Proving, we were attacked. Many of us were killed, but I was the killers' target. They would have killed me, if not for Rost. He saved me, but in doing so… he died, and I was injured."

Aloy wrapped her arms around herself at the memory of losing her father-figure. She tried to be strong for Rost, but it was an act that she couldn't always keep up. Regardless of the moment of weakness, she carried on talking.

"I woke in All-Mother mountain, and one of the High Matriarchs was there. She took me to this door and told me that that was where I was found as a child. There was this… scan. It didn't recognise me. It said there was some type of corruption."

"Com-pu-ter sys-tems can be corr-up-ted." Flintlock mused. "Some-times they can be re-paired. I could look it over, but I was only a basic en-gin-eer back home. I might just make the dam-age worse."

Aloy didn't respond to the information. She couldn't invest herself in a possible false hope. Besides, she had a story to finish.

"After that, High Matriarch Teersa sent me out to heal this corruption, to try and stop attacks from corrupted machines that were sent to fight us. I met up with War-Chief Sona and with the forces under her command, we tracked down the killers who attacked us, and we exacted revenge. Now I'm travelling to Meridian to follow up a lead that I have on a traitor that worked for the killers, and that's all there is to know about me."

"So what's your story?" The huntress asked after a few seconds, turning the tables on the Dinobot. "If you're here, and not on your world, then what happened?"

The Dinobot sighed and briefly shuttered her optics. When she opened them, they projected a hologram into the air- a 3D image of a small, slim, gold, silver and red femme, barely out of sparkinghood, sitting on of the shoulders of a much larger mech of the same colour scheme. Both bots were laughing, carefree, and young.

Flintlock pointed to the femme in the image. "That's me. Or at least, what I used to look like."

"Wow." Aloy breathed. "Is this hologram actually here, or is it being picked up by my Focus?"

"This is a phy-sic-al ho-lo-gram that I'm pro-ject-ing." The Cybertronian explained, grabbing the image by a corner and waving it around before allowing it to fizzle away.

"Who was the other… person?" the human asked, trying to find a word that would describe the mech and failing.

"My bro-ther. Now shut up and let me ans-wer your first quest-ion."

Flintlock projected another hologram, except this one was a video feed, showing a metallic sphere hanging in space.

"This was Cy-ber-tron in the Gol-den Age." The Dinobot said, before skipping to a point where it had been replaced with a energon-deprived husk. "And this is what it looks like now. Our pla-net fell into war. The simple ver-sion is that there are the De-cep-ti-cons, who want con-trol of Cy-ber-tron, and the Au-to-bots, who fight for peace. I'm on the Au-to-bot team."

Once again, the video cut to display two cybertronians, one of them red, blue and silver, while the other was grey with hints of black and purple.

"These are the lead-ers of the two fac-tions. The blue and red one is Op-ti-mus Prime, Comm-an-der of the Au-to-bots, and Me-ga-tron, Lord of the De-cep-ti-cons."

This time, the hologram showed a battle between six Autobots against hundreds of insect-like Decepticons, taken from an optic feed. The Autobots all fought fiercely, tearing through their opponents with swords, blasters, and fists. Eventually, they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers, one of them being brought to the brink of offlining in the process.

"E-ven-tu-ally, my unit and I were cap-tur-ed by 'Cons while in-ves-ti-ga-ting one of their out-posts. We were brought to their head sci-en-tist, or butch-er de-pen-ding on your view. Shock-wave."

With that name, a tremor of rage shuddered through Flintlock's frame as her servos curled into fists. The hologram stuttered to a display of a purple and black mech with a single, burning yellow optic.

"He tor-tured us, ex-pe-ri-men-ted on us, changed us in-to the mon-sters we now are. He low-ered our ab-ili-ty to think and boost-ed our streng-th in an a-ttempt to cre-ate su-per sol-diers for the De-cep-ti-con cause. My bro-ther and I were forced in-to the same best-i-al mode, and our frames were mod-i-fied to make us al-most un-stopp-a-ble in com-bat. Shock-wave made us watch as he tore us a-part and sti-tched us back to-geth-er in an a-ttem-pt to break us, but we held firm.

E-ven-tu-ally, we es-cap-ed, and torched the to-wer that we were being held in, blow-ing up a space bridge in the pro-cess. As we were forc-ing our way out, I was knock-ed into an open es-cape pod by an ex-plo-sion. The thing launch-ed, putt-ing me into stasis in the pro-cess. I cra-shed on this world a month ago, and I've been sur-vi-ving since then."

As Flintlock finished, the hologram flickered out, for good this time. The Dinobot bowed her helm and shuttered her optics at the stream of memory files that had been stirred up as Aloy sat back and tried to absorb the information.

"So, can you get back to your home, or at least, any other Autobots?" she asked.

"No." Flinlock said, her optics opening again and locking with the eyes of the human. "The es-cape pod was for a sin-gle use. It would be too dangerous to travel in it. Be-sides, most of it has been dis-ass-em-bled for parts a-round this tem-por-ary base of op-er-a-tions. I'm stran-ded here."

"Would you like to come with me?"

Aloy hadn't intended to ask the question, but now the Watcher was out of the bag, there would be no putting it back in.

Flintlock blinked in surprise, but didn't respond as the huntress went on to say "I have very little idea about what I'm supposed to do, and I feel like I'm lost in a world that's too big for me. I always try to rise above the challenges that I'm faced with, but I don't know if I can face this alone. Since you're here, and since you can't return to your home, will you come with me?"

The Dinobot tilted her helm to the side in consideration. "Will there be in-ter-est-ing places to go?"

"Lots."

"Peo-ple to meet?"

"I'm not sure how they'd take meeting you, but yes."

"Ma-chines to des-troy?"

"Absolutely."

Flintlock grinned broadly and stood. "I'm in, Hunt-ress. Be pre-par-ed for max-i-mum may-hem!"